https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/microsoft-research-fellowship/

Key dates:

• Call for proposals: Tuesday, November 4, 2025
• Proposal submission deadline: Tuesday, December 2, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET
• Proposal notifications sent by: Tuesday, February 10, 2026

About the program

The Microsoft Research Fellowship creates opportunities for academic scholars (faculty, PhD students, and postdocs) to collaborate with Microsoft Research on open research challenges that advance scientific understanding, drive innovation, and deliver societal benefit.

In an era of rapid innovation, this fellowship brings together academia and industrial researchers across disciplines to shape the future through open research collaborations. Academic collaboration is foundational to advancing scientific discovery, and today, it’s more critical than ever. Academic institutions contribute deep domain expertise, novel perspectives, and a culture of exploration. Microsoft Research’s global labs offer deep technical expertise, cutting-edge academic inquiry, and real-world application. By working together, we believe we can accelerate innovation, promote responsible development, and address complex challenges that can best be solved through interdisciplinary exploration.

• General eligibility

  Microsoft is seeking scholars in academia who are pursuing research and instruction in academic venues across a range of disciplines.

  Eligibility guidelines vary by research challenge. Some challenges accept proposals from students, others from faculty, and some from both. Please refer to the “Research Challenges” tab and the eligibility details below to understand the criteria for each challenge.

  This program accepts proposals from individuals based in the following regions: Africa, Australia & New Zealand, Canada, Europe, India, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States.

  Microsoft actively seeks to foster greater levels of diversity in our workforce and in our pipeline of future researchers and collaborators. We are always looking for the best and brightest talent and celebrating individuality. We invite candidates to come as they are and do what they love.

  Fellows selected to be a part of the Microsoft Research Fellowship program are subject to disciplinary proceedings for inappropriate behavior, including but not limited to discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment), or plagiarism will forfeit their funding. If accepted, a standard background screen will be conducted. Though Microsoft is not hiring you for employment, a successful screen is required as a stipulation to transfer funds under this fellowship.

• Provisions of the award

• The Microsoft Research Fellowship is designed to create meaningful opportunities for collaboration between academic researchers and Microsoft Research. These opportunities will vary by research challenge and may include working sessions, regular check-ins, asynchronous collaboration, workshops, and other formats tailored to the nature of the research.

  All funds are distributed as unrestricted gifts as a one-time payment made directly to the institution/university and disbursed according to the institution/ university policies. Direct payments to individuals are not made by the program.

  Funding amounts vary by the region a fellows’ organization/institution of employment is located in.

  • Africa – $17,000 (USD)
  • Australia & New Zealand – $17,000 (USD)
  • Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico – $17,000 (USD)
  • Canada – $47,000 (USD)
  • Europe – $27,000 (USD)
  • India – $17,000 (USD)
  • Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan – $17,000 (USD)
  • United States – $47,000 (USD)

  These stipend amounts include travel funding to support in-person collaboration. Fellows may use this funding to visit Microsoft Research principal investigators and collaborators at a Microsoft Research lab or office. 

  All payments will be distributed in March/April 2026. If selected, Microsoft will work with respective departmental finance liaisons to transfer funds.

  *Stipend rates are reviewed annually and benchmarked against comparable fellowship programs in each geography to ensure competitive alignment. 

Research challenges

Research objectives and eligibility requirements vary by challenge. Some challenges accept proposals from PhD students, others from faculty, and some from both. Review the descriptions below to understand each challenge’s research goals and specific eligibility criteria.

AI for global and societal impact

• Equitable interactive AI tools for creatives 

• Global employment, hiring, and performance outcomes based on AI adoption

• Grounding AI in global majority languages, cultures, and contexts

• Tackling disinformation and misinformation through the design, implementation and evaluation of provenance tools for end users

AI fundamentals: scalable reasoning, model adaption and evaluation

• Advancing generative AI evaluation through psychometrics and measurement

• Efficient and accurate post-training of retrieval models 

• Steering reasoning models with test-time verification

Biological and scientific modeling

• Generative models for regulatory genomics

Foundational systems & infrastructure for AI

• AI for clean electricity planning and deployment

• Systems, Algorithms, and Rigorous Applications of Reinforcement Learning Post-Training

Human-AI collaboration and interaction

• AI Models and Creativity

• AI-powered Collaborative Dynamic Experiences

• Beyond Assistance: AI as teammate for collaboration, alignment, and collective intelligence

• Toward socially intelligent AI agents

Multimodal & Embodied Intelligence

• Beyond tokenization: foundational approaches to multimodal LLMs

• General-purpose robotic foundation models for embodied AI

• Robot learning from alternative data sources